The object of this blog began as a display of a varied amount of writings, scribblings and rantings that can be easily analysed by technology today to present the users with a clearer picture of the state of their minds, based on tests run on their input and their uses of the technology we are advocating with www.projectbrainsaver.com

Saturday, 12 November 2011

The first meeting of the expanded cabinet of Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai on Tuesday decided to recommend amnesty for Maoist CA member Bal Krishna Dhungel to the President. Dhungel was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonm...

ent last year by the Supreme Court.

The decision has come at a time when only a week ago, the ruling coalition had signed a deal to endorse the bill on Truth and Reconciliation Commission and conflict cases, to be dealt with as per the spirit of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA). Soon after being elected as the PM, Bhattarai had expressed commitment to form the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and Commission on Disappeared within a month.

“This decision has questioned the honesty of the government in implementing the agreement,” says UML leader Pradip Gyawali. “The decision is against the spirit of the CPA, rule of law and international humanitarian laws.”

The seven-point agreement had come as a trust building tool to move the peace process but the cabinet decision on Tuesday has alarmed the opposition. “This decision is condemnable,” says NC chief whip Laxman Ghimire. “This is a proof that we can’t expect rule of law from this government. The government hurriedly took the decision before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was formed to protect Dhungel, who has been convicted of murder by the Supreme Court.”

Although the Supreme Court has slapped a life sentence on Dhungel convicting him of murder of Ujjan Kumar Shrestha in 2000, he was never arrested. “It is ridiculous that the government decides to recommend amnesty for a person who was never taken in custody even after he was convicted of murder,” says senior advocate and rights activist Nutan Thapaliya. “If we don’t oppose the decision, we will be promoting impunity.”

Dhungel won the CA election from Okhaldhunga-2 in 2008. The SC verdict came last year but the court verdict was never enforced. The UCPN (Maoist) had been trying to secure amnesty for Dhungel ever since the SC verdict.

The then home minister Krishna Bahadur Mahara had sent a proposal to the Cabinet on 10 June seeking amnesty to 23 people, including Dhungel, by invoking presidential power as per Article 151 of the Interim Constitution. He claimed that Dhungel was performing his political duty as per the order from his party and the charges against him were politically motivated.

The Maoist-led government had postponed the move to withdraw all ‘wartime political cases’ after the rights organisations and the United Nations strongly opposed the idea. The UCPN (Maoist) had signed a four-point deal with Madhesi Alliance to ensure the win of the Maoist candidate Baburam Bhattarai last month, in which both the parties had agreed to withdraw cases against their cadres filed during the insurgency period and Madhes Movement.

“The government decision is the formal beginning of giving immunity to criminals,” says lawyer Govinda Sharma Bandi, who is also the coordinator of the Transitional Justice Law Committee. “The decision has made mockery of the CPA, interim constitution, rule of law and international humanitarian laws.”

He argues the CPA has no provision for amnesty to those convicted of criminal offense. “The president should not allow this to happen,” he says. “As a patron of the constitution he reserves right to intervene into this unconstitutional move of the government. He should start consultations with experts before deciding on this.”

A Maoist lawyer and CA member Ekraj Bhandari says the government decision is a ‘positive step towards the peace process’. “The SC verdict is not irrevocable and final,” he says. “If the SC does not give justice to an innocent, there is a provision of seeking amnesty from the president in any country.”

He argues that Dhungel’s case is not a criminal offense but a purely political motivated one. He argues the state jailed Dhungel for eight years based on political ideology. He says, “The state should find out who is responsible for his plight and compensate him”.

GPL license version 3.0

a) GPL license version 3.0 – Any distributed project that contains within it or makes reference to any portion of the SixthSense source code has to be released with the source code under the GPL version 3.0 license or later.

b) Commercial license – If you would like to use SixthSenxe in a commercial project without releasing the source code, you can contact us for a commercial license. Please contact pranavmistry@gmail.com for more information.

Foreign Aid- A Myth called Humanitarian Intervention

I was watching a news report on CNN by Dr. Sanjay Gupta about the problems of delivering aid to Haitian earthquake victims and thought I should blog about it. The report shows Dr. Gupta in ‘humanitarian-mission-mode’ unlike traditional journalists, visiting an orphanage running out of food even though its located close to a warehouse filled with foreign aid supplies. He makes a few calls and brings aid to the orphans. He also shows visuals of food dating back to January when the earthquake happened, still undistributed and now close to expiry, and tells us how its all going to waste.

Now our normal reaction after watching such a report would be one of anger and frustration at the Haitian government authorities and the hundreds of NGO’s operating there. Why is it so difficult to get aid to the needy even after six months? Could there be other reasons?

Yes there are, if we bother to carefully analyse the report and care to look beyond just the humanitarian or the emotional aspect. It’s not like the Haitian government doesn’t care about its people or that the NGO’s are doing a lousy job. It all boils down to the economics of demand and supply and the role played by foreign aid in subverting it.

In normal times, Haiti would have been able to fend for itself, mostly if not completely, as it would have the capacity to source its food locally. But after the catastrophic earthquake, foreign aid began to arrive and was distributed among the people. Thus an artificial supply of food was created to prevent starvation. This system worked for a short period of time albeit with hiccups. But then there were more problems. Any good economist would agree that when there’s too much aid and that aid is continuously supplied to more than a million people for more than two to three months, it becomes more of a curse than a blessing. It starts wreaking havoc on a fragile local economy like Haiti, trying to recover from a major catastrophe as there won’t be many takers for the locally produced stuff which is the real backbone of such a nation’s economy. Since the foreign aid isn’t locally sourced from Haiti, such aid in turn creates a vicious circle of low demand for locally produced food resulting in financial losses for the person or company producing it which in return results in layoffs and unemployment. Thus instead of self-reliance, foreign aid actually aids the destruction of the local economy. The Haitian government knows this and has therefore chosen to support its local economy and generate employment rather than distribute foreign aid. As a consequence, the aid is rotting up in the warehouses.

Its true that foreign aid could do a lot of humanitarian good. But then it also disrupts the local economy precisely because the aid is ‘foreign’.In fact, the donations given by people all over the world as a humanitarian gesture of support for Haiti’s victims would ironically, have ended up supporting their own nations! Of course CNN wouldn’t want to show this because it wouldn’t want USAID being shown as being part of the problem rather than the solution. That explains the pure humanitarian angle of Dr. Gupta’s report which makes for great journalism but solves none of the problems which has created the crisis in the first place!

Of course this doesn’t mean any foreign aid or humanitarian intervention isn’t beneficial to a nation in crisis. In fact it should be supplied as quickly as possible to effectively tide over the crisis. But after the first few weeks, depending on the recovery efforts, foreign aid, if at all necessary, should be ideally given in the form of monetary contributions which should be used to procure locally available labour and goods. This would generate employment and enable the crisis hit population to be self-reliant making any further aid or humanitarian support unnecessary. The common sense approach to solving a humanitarian crisis would be to do everything necessary to help the victims stand up on their feet as soon as possible and not make them dependent on foreign aid and handouts for the rest of their lives. That could only happen if the UN and the international community is truly interested in humanitarian efforts instead of serving its own self interests!

Contents

The SixthSense prototype comprises a pocket projector, a mirror and a camera contained in a pendant like, wearable device. Both the projector and the camera are connected to a mobile computing device in the user’s pocket. The projector projects visual information enabling surfaces, walls and physical objects around us to be used as interfaces; while the camera recognizes and tracks users' hand gestures and physical objects using computer-vision based techniques.[3] The software program processes the video stream data captured by the camera and tracks the locations of the colored markers (visual tracking fiducials) at the tips of the user’s fingers. The movements and arrangements of these fiducials are interpreted into gestures that act as interaction instructions for the projected application interfaces. SixthSense supports multi-touch and multi-user interaction.

SixthSense prototypes cost approximately $350 to build (not including the computer),[4][5][6] the main cost being the micro-projector. Mistry had announced in Nov 2009 that the source code will be released under Open Source.[7] On September 5, 2011, Mistry added a link to the SixthSense page on his personal website[8] to a Google Code SixthSense project[9].

IUCN/SSC Polar Bear Specialist Group

The official website for the Polar Bear Specialist Group of the IUCN Species Survival Commission

The PBSG is the authoritative source for information on the world’s polar bears, and one of IUCN/SSC’s more than 100 specialist groups that work to produce and to compile scientific knowledge about the world’s species and give independent scientific advice to decision-makers and management authorities.

Explore the content to find:

Comprehensive and updated information on polar bears, and updated and official status information on all subpopulations

Documents and info from all previous meetings of the PBSG, from the first meeting in 1965 to the latest meeting

Action now to save polar bears

A study by IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) predicts a dramatic reduction in polar bear habitats over the next 10 to 50 years, due largely to global warming.

The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species assesses Polar Bears (Ursus maritimus) as Vulnerable, with trends that suggest the population is decreasing. Polar Bears rely almost entirely on the marine sea ice environment for their survival, so much so that large scale changes in their habitat will have a devastating impact on the population.

“Now is the time to act in order to save the waning polar bear population,” says Dag Vongraven, Chair IUCN/Polar Bear Specialist Group, Norwegian Polar Institute. “If we fail to make a stand to save this species we risk having the population become severely decimated, and quite certainly they will have disappeared from many areas where they’re found today.”

Climate change poses the most substantial threat to the habitat of Polar Bears. Recent trends for sea ice extent and thickness predict dramatic reductions over coming years— declines of roughly 10 to 50% of annual sea ice are predicted by 2100. A recent study by the Norwegian Polar Institute suggests that summer sea ice in the Polar Basin might be gone in a decade, not 50 to 100 years as most models project. The long term trends reveal substantial global reductions of the extent of ice coverage in the Arctic and the length of time ice when is present each year.

“Climate change will be one of the major drivers of species extinctions in the 21st century,” says Simon Stuart, Chair of IUCN’s Species Survival Commission. “In order to slow the pace the adverse effects of climate change are having on species around the world, we must work to reduce use of energy from fossil fuels and ensure that our leaders make and adhere to strong commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions now.”

Polar Bears reside throughout the ice-covered waters in Canada, Greenland, Norway, the Russian Federation, and Alaska in the United States, and their range is limited by the southern extent of sea ice. Polar Bears that have continuous access to sea ice are able to hunt throughout the year. However, in areas where the sea ice melts completely each summer, Polar Bears are forced to spend several months on land fasting on stored fat reserves until freeze-up.

Other population stress factors that also impact the species survival include toxic contaminants, shipping, recreational viewing and oil and gas exploration. The Polar Bear is unique among species protected under the Endangered Species Act because it is the first to be designated as threatened due to global warming.

As sick and disabled people, carers and other concerned people, including professionals, we are writing to you to urge the Royal College of Nursing and BMJ Group to immediately end your relationship with Atos, including stopping any advertising of Atos jobs or Atos the company on your websites, and not having Atos at the RCN Bulletin Jobs Fair 13-14 September, or the BMJ recruitment fair 30 September to 1 October 2011 in London.

As you know, Atos currently has a £100m a year contract with the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to carry out examinations for disability benefits.

We are outraged that Atos is profiting from denying those of us who are sick or disabled, the benefits we need to survive and maintain our level of health. In May, at the protest outside Atos headquarters, a number of people spoke about our experiences of the examination, being denied benefit and having to appeal to get it back. One woman testified that her brother, who had severe depression, committed suicide after being cut off. See:

The media have exposed more of the dire consequences of Atos’ decisions. In February, the Daily Mirror highlighted the case of a Derbyshire man with a heart condition, found fit for work, who had to go through tribunal to appeal, then was awarded Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) but died of a heart attack the day before his next Atos exam was due.

A Channel 4 News report on 27 July 2011 acknowledged what thousands have been saying: it interviewed the heartbroken partner of a critically ill man whom Atos denied his entitlement on grounds that he was ‘fit for work’ – he died less than three months later. How many more people have died following such cruel and callous treatment? The coverage was prompted by a Parliamentary report from the Work and Pensions Committee of MPs, in which they criticised Atos. Atos the powerful multinational has taken vindictive action against disabled people and carers’ websites where it is criticised, getting sites closed down which isolated people rely on for support.

In August, the Guardian reported that 12 Atos doctors are under investigation by the General Medical Council for improper conduct. The article referred to numerous previous cases and investigations by other bodies.

A nurse in Scotland was so shocked at Atos’s behaviour that she blew the whistle on them. She said that people with serious lung diseases were found fit for work as long as they could sit in front of a computer, and that parents who attend with their children are automatically found fit for work. And Atos is investigating staff, one a nurse, who used their Facebook pages to insult people as “parasitic wankers” and “down and outs”.

According to DWP figures, only 6% of those who have been assessed are placed in the Support Group of Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) which exempts them from the work conditions now attached to benefit. (This 6% includes claimants whom the DWP has already exempted from the Atos examination because their condition is so serious.) http://research.dwp.gov.uk/asd/workingage/esa_wca/esa_wca_27072010.pdf

GP Margaret McCartney, writing in the BMJ, has questioned the ethics of doctors performing assessments without access to patients’ medical records, and the lack of specialist knowledge of physiotherapists and general nurses employed by Atos. (BMJ 2011; 342:d599. Full article attached.)

Since 1995, when medical assessments for incapacity benefit were privatised and taken out of public services, standards have steadily declined. But Atos has brought this to a new low. While none of the work tests deserve to be called a “medical” as they have no basis in patient welfare, since Atos started carrying out the ESA tests in 2008, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of people with severe illness and disability being assessed as fit for work and denied benefits.

This has been clear for some time. In 2009, ‘Who’s Cheating Who?’, a BBC Scotland documentary, highlighted the plight of June Mitchell who applied for sickness benefit. When examined by Atos, she complained of breathlessness and feeling tired. She was scored zero points and found fit for work. She went back to her GP, was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and died shortly afterwards.

Doctors’ and nurses’ ethics are being corrupted by Atos’ offers of higher salaries and daytime reduced work hours. Some doctors have tried to argue that their duty to patients does not apply when assessing benefit claimants on behalf of Atos. But the General Medical Council has upheld that doctors are always bound by this duty whether seeing patients, employees (when assessing occupational health), benefit and insurance claimants, athletes, among others (see attached response from the Standards & Fitness to Practise Directorate).

As doctors and nurses are enticed into privatisation, and cases of criminal negligence and even murder in hospitals and care homes hit the headlines, patients and their loved ones are increasingly speaking out against the indifference and cruelty they face at the hands of those paid to protect them.

Claimants rightly fear that most Atos assessors are uncaring and prejudiced – they work to targets which have nothing to do with patients’ individual health needs or with the realities of the job market which sick and disabled people are being thrown into. The stress of the Atos examinations has hastened deaths and caused a number of people to commit suicide. For many others, it is exacerbating their already fragile health condition.

Atos kills. Medical professionals who lend it credibility give it a licence to kill. We call on the BMJ Group and RCN to end all association with Atos, and on doctors and nurses to defend patients and uphold our welfare.

2011 Photo Gallery

The photographs presented here represent a selection of species from The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species (2011) and were contributed from a range of sources including IUCN SSC Specialist Group members. If you wish to use any of these photographs, please contact the photographers directly to request their permission to do so. For a wider selection of threatened species imagery, please see ARKive (www.arkive.org), an online multi-media of the world's species.